We Are Taught Lies about the American Revolution, Half-Truths about the French Revolution, Some Ugly Truths about the Bolshevik Revolution, But NOTHING about the 1936 Spanish Egalitarian Revolution
Read why below. Also: Coming Attraction--My detailed look at the French Revolution as experienced by the have-nots, the viewpoint we are not taught in school or by the media
American school children all learn about George Orwell’s Animal Farm, but never about the book Orwell wrote about his experience fighting on the side of the anarchists who made an egalitarian revolution in about half of Spain in 1936-9. Our ruling class, to control us, relies on censorship and deceitful narratives about the big revolutions in Western history. Our rulers want us to believe that the American Revolution gave us all the equality and democracy we could reasonably want. They want us to believe that any effort to abolish class inequality to prevent the rich from treating the have-nots like dirt will only result in making things MUCH worse. They are wrong!
Most American readers of this article will have heard a lot about the American, French and Russian (Bolshevik) revolutions, but will know very little if anything about the 1939-6 Spanish revolution.
Americans learn in school how the Founding Fathers who led the American Revolution were wonderful people who deserve our eternal gratitude for founding the United States with the 1776 Declaration of Independence and for writing its 1787 Constitution. We absolutely never learn the truth that I write about here and here.
In our schooling and from newspaper and magazine articles and T.V. and films we Americans have also heard about the French Revolution, in particular about how it led to the bloody and horrifying period known as the Terror during which time the revolutionaries sent countless innocent people to be executed by the guillotine and even eventually killed themselves—even its most famous leader, Robespierre—by that device as they accused each other of being secretly counter-revolutionaries. Soon I will post at length about the French Revolution—stay tuned.
Likewise, we Americans have been taught (especially after World War II when the Soviet Union went from ally to enemy) about how the Russian Bolshevik revolution created an ugly totalitarian regime led first by Lenin and then by his appointed successor, Stalin, and how it killed and imprisoned (the Gulag) millions of innocent people and eventually held the infamous secret kangaroo trials that used trumped up charges to justify even the executions of many of the original Bolshevik leaders. I wrote about the first two decades of this revolution here.
But ask an American what they think about the anarchist-led revolution that abolished capitalism and created egalitarianism in about half of Spain from 1936 to 1939 and they will most likely reply, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Read here (and in the articles it links to) about the Spanish Revolution, and you will see why the ruling class doesn’t want us to know about it.
What’s going on here?
The reason Americans are very familiar with a ruling-class-approved narrative about the first three of these revolutions but virtually unaware of even the existence of the fourth is this. The narratives about the first three revolutions are powerful propaganda for the status quo that is a dictatorship of the rich that treats the have-nots like dirt and that pretends to be a democracy. But the Spanish revolution does not lend itself to such a narrative. The reason it does not lend itself to such a narrative is because, in contrast to all of the first three revolutions in which the revolutionaries were enemies of the have-nots, the Spanish revolution was one in which the revolutionaries were friends of the have-nots and in which the have-nots prevailed (at least for a few years) against the haves. Our rulers, in their infinite wisdom, do not want us to learn from the mistakes of the Spanish revolutionaries that led to their defeat, but I DO want us to learn from these mistakes, so I wrote about them here.
An interesting fact that illustrates the lengths to which the U.S. ruling class goes to control what Americans do or do not know about revolution is this. Most Americans have heard about the book Animal Farm, by George Orwell; and many have been asked or encouraged to read it in school. Even Americans who have not read this book are nonetheless familiar with the famous phrase in the book, “All the animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Americans in school are typically not told that Animal Farm is specifically about the hypocrisy of the Bolshevik rulers of the Soviet Union who purport to be all about equality but really are not. Instead Americans are told that Animal Farm is a book about how ANY effort to make society truly equal will only result in it remaining unequal, and therefore it is foolish to try to make society equal. Americans are never told that the author of Animal Farm, George Orwell, went to Spain in 1936 to fight on the side of the anarchists for real equality and that he wrote a wonderful book about his experience in Spain praising the Spanish revolutionaries, titled Homage to Catalonia. Surprise! Surprise! Hardly any Americans have ever heard of this book.
Read about the egalitarian revolution in Spain. You can start with my short introductory article (also linked to above) here, and then I hope you will read the articles and books and one video that that I link to from there.
Stay tuned for my forthcoming article about the French Revolution, focusing on how the revolutionaries treated the have-nots (it’s no secret how they treated the royals.)
An apology: My Substack post yesterday included the email I sent (or tried to send) to President Biden telling him not to allow Ukraine to fire long-range missiles into Russia and thereby start World War III. After publishing my post, I received a “bounce back” email saying that my email could not be sent. I got the email address from a Google search, but I guess not everything you read on the internet is true, uh? I am sorry if I caused you to waste your time on that wrong email address. Even with the right email address it was no doubt a waste of time, but I figure if I’m ever standing before the Pearly Gates I’d like to have it in my record that at least I did something to try to stop WWIII.
Your posts are essential reading in exposing how the majority are abused and exploited by tried and tested techniques in history.
Thanks John for your interesting replays of history. You are correct - modern education is skewed such as kids don't get to study modern history (post 1787) and therefore are blind to the political decisions that constantly lead us to war. I've not researched this but I have often wondered why Russia was a valued WW!! ally then post 1945 became a mortal enemy to the West. What were the incidents that caused this change? Who (in the West) were the main players that promoted Russia as the existential threat to USA and Europe? How did it come about that whereas USA was quick to "rebuild" Japan and Germany post war their ally Russia, who contributed most to the defeat of Hitler, were suddenly treated with the same disdain as the allies had treated the Nazis?